Glass
by Jemennuie
Summary: The Hog's Head, Marcus thought, was a good place for a bit of quiet, a good place to sit and forget there was a war going on. But he hadn't planned on seeing Dumbledore there, and he certainly hadn't wanted to talk with the Headmaster. Set during HBP.


_Glass_

A pub, he thinks, he wants to find a nice, good pub for the evening, one where he can order a drink and drum his fingers on the side of the glass and count the splinters in the table like You-Know-Who hadn't appeared from nowhere a few months ago and the economy isn't plunging and instead there is just the quiet and the glass beneath his fingertips.

The Three Broomsticks, perhaps? No, too noisy.

The Leaky Cauldron? No, the bartender's too perkily friendly.

The Hog's Head? A bit long to apparate, but as good as any pub.

Apparating always has a way of taking away his appetite, and he wonders if one of these times he'll remember to use Floo powder instead, but maybe that wouldn't be better, because then he'd come out dizzy and stagger towards the tables whereas now he can evenly regard the entire room. Table…table…plenty of empty tables to choose from, one against the wall, or one in the center of the room, or maybe one between the two, centrally located but slightly dislocated.

With a nod towards the bartender he orders a Shandy and within minutes he has it in his hands, his fingers pressing against the cold glass as he takes a swig and his eyes shift from the knotted wooden table he's sitting at to the slightly less knotted table adjacent to him, to the man smoking a cigarette across the room and the woman with the red fingernails and the bearded man lightly chatting with the bartender. The bearded man certainly looks familiar, hell, he almost looks like the Headmaster, but he hasn't seen Dumbledore since graduating a bit over two years ago and it strains his brain to imagine the Headmaster doing something as normal or unprofessional as stopping by the Hog's Head for a drink.

The man smoking lights up another cigarette and the purple smoke curls around his head, while the woman clicks her fingers for another drink and the bartender shakes his head, before pulling out another bottle and the bearded-maybe-Headmaster turns to leave, but the maybe-Headmaster doesn't leave, instead he slows his steps and cocks his head in recognition before speaking.

"Hello, Marcus."

Marcus winces and wraps his fingers a bit more firmly around his glass, because bloody hell it _is_ the Headmaster, and he's never really liked Dumbledore, and the last time they talked was when he failed his N.E.W.T.s and had to obtain permission to re-do his Seventh Year, and he didn't meet the older man's eyes then, so he sees no reason to do so now, when he can only think of one reason he would be approached so unexpectedly. "Good Evening, Headmaster."

"How is your sister doing?" Dumbledore says it amicably, like he is speaking to an old friend and not one of his hundreds of former students, and if it was before the start of the war Marcus would have rudely demanded: what business was it of the Headmaster's? It wasn't, that's what.

But it's not before the war, and he's always on edge now because the Flints' pure blood can't protect them, or at least it can't protect _her_, because their pure blood has failed her somewhere, so instead he says to Dumbledore in a tone far too meek, far too worried for his liking, "Why?"

"I'm certain you're aware your sister she turned eleven this summer? I was privy towards the decision concerning her potential admission to Hogswarts-" Dumbledore recounts it like he's summarizing the weather forecast for the week, and Marcus grits his teeth because _of course_ he knows Fiona turned eleven this summer, and _of course_ he knows of the worried whispers between their parents, and of the owl that never came, and he wants Dumbledore to stop rambling and answer his bloody question- "Well, your parents met with me to discuss their options, and how Fiona could transfer into a Muggle school district, and now that the Muggle school year has started I was wondering how she was adjusting?"

Marcus directs the most withering glare he can force onto his face towards Dumbledore, because with as something as out-of-place as the Headmaster addressing him in the Hog's Head, he had been expecting something on the scale of news of an attack, something like _'I've heard she's recovering in St. Mungo's'_ or _'I'm sorry for your loss'_, because Death Eaters hate Squibs nearly as much as they hate Mudbloods and the Flint name can't protect her from that. "She—she doesn't fit in. With the Muggles," he says jerkily and more truthfully than he'd like. "They don't even use quills or parchment or—or anything normal. My parents had to buy her _Muggle _school supplies."

"I assume you do not have any Muggle relatives with which she could talk?"

The words which before this summer would have left his mouth with pride are hung back by near disappointment now, and they lose themselves before they're fully formed: "No. We don't."

"That is unfortunate, but not unheard of. The transition is undoubtedly very difficult on her; I hope you are being a supportive older brother?"

Marcus's next words come out of their own accord, and he wonders if he can blame the alcohol for his loose tongue, but he's really only had half, maybe three-quarters of a Shandy and that shouldn't be enough and instead he should have just told Dumbledore to bugger off a while ago, before his tongue decided to start talking. "Well—I try to be supportive when I see her. But I don't live nearby my parents and her anymore." The Headmaster's blue eyes regard him intently, with an almost disappointed air, and it's on the tip of Marcus's tongue to blurt out that, damn it, he's not a student anymore, the Headmaster can't take points away from his House for poor decision making or anything else, and Dumbledore has no right to be judging him like that— "Quidditch keeps me busy," he adds stubbornly. "I've been training day-and-night, I have to beat out Shildrake and Zebedee and then I'll be promoted from reserve to full-time Chaser."

"I was not aware that sitting alone in the Hog's Head drinking was how one trained for Quidditch," Dumbledore replies evenly, and Marcus wordlessly opens his mouth before snapping it shut again.

"Yeah, well," he finally replies feebly, before taking another sip of his drink.

"I can assure you that if you do not play the role of a good older sibling now you will later regret it," Dumbledore states matter-of-factly, and with a regal-looking sweep of his hat, he strides towards the door, "Give my regards to your parents and sister."

The man smoking the cigarette is now blowing rings of blue smoke, the women with the red nail polish has emptied another glass, one stained with red lipstick and traces of foam, and the bartender is unblinkingly staring at Marcus. Marcus glances in the bartender's direction, before awkwardly fixing his gaze to his nearly empty glass, the glass he is holding so firmly his knuckles have turned white.

"Dumbledore, that old crackpot, he doesn't know what he's talking about," Marcus blurts out defensively.

The bartender neither speaks nor breaks his fixed gaze.

…

A/N: Marcus Flint repeating his seventh year is based on canon. His family is never mentioned in canon, though, so all details about his family were self-created. This was done for the "Two Roads" challenge over at the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenge Forum, where the prompt was to write about two characters running into each other; I was given Dumbledore and curiosity and chose to have him run into Marcus Flint. Also, I was experimenting with a third-person stream of consciousness style here, so any constructive criticism on that or anything else would be appreciated.


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